EghtesadOnline: A locally developed messenger app 'Bale' has tied up with fintech service provider ‘Phone Pay’, to offer cashless payment of taxi fares in Tehran.

Phone Pay, a local e-payment service provider lets people pay their taxi fare with their cellphone and puts an end to the routine hassles and unpleasant scenes between cabbies asking for change and passengers who never seem to have coins in their wallets.

The company started equipping cabs in the capital with an identification QR code, letting passengers pay by scanning the codes on their cellphone, Peivast news website reported.

As per an agreement between Phone Pay and the developer’s team of Bale (means ‘yes’ in Persian), users of the messenger will soon be able to employ Bale’s app for scanning QR codes to pay the taxi fares with no need to install the Phone Pay app, according to Financial Tribune.

The CEO of Bale, Mohammad Yarahmadi says, users of the messenger will have a personalized rechargeable wallet in the messenger's platform, through which they can pay the cab.

"Passengers are not required to submit their bank card information," Yarahmadi ensured the users of the system's security. Users will simply charge their account on Bale and later use their credit to pay.

Shared taxi fares per passenger are between 15,000 rials (10 cents) for a short ride to 50,000 rials (33 cents) for long-distance drives in Tehran. While both passengers and cabbies prefer round numbers, mandatory prices introduced by the municipality almost always include some change of 1,000 or 2,000 rials that are hard to come by these days.